NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft made a historic New Year’s encounter with an object nicknamed Ultima Thule in the Kuiper Belt a billion miles beyond Pluto. The probe passed around 3,500 kilometres from the mysterious object at 0533 GMT on New Year’s Day, making it the most distant Solar System body ever explored up close.

NASA’s New Horizons probe, racing toward a 1 January flyby of the Kuiper Belt body known as Ultima Thule, has given scientists their first major surprise: the oblong, or binary body shows no signs of a discernible light curve suggesting rotation.

Three years outbound from Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is homing in on a Kuiper Belt object dubbed Ultima Thule for a dramatic New Year’s Day flyby, the first by any space probe in the extreme outer solar system.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has finally caught sight of its post-Pluto target, a Kuiper Belt body nicknamed Ultima Thule. If all goes well, New Horizons will make a close flyby of the distant body on 1 January.